Volunteers do their best to trim, humanely, the rising population of feral cats

Denise Ryan, Vancouver Sun02.25.2013

Eleanor Lewis, left, and Natalie Backgaard prepare a cat on February 24, at the SPCA hospital on Vancouver’s East 7th Avenue for a spay operation during the annual Feral Cat Trap. The cats are tagged for identification during the mass spay and neuter day.Ward Perrin
/ PNG

Eleanor Lewis, left, and Natalie Backgaard prepare a cat on February 24, at the SPCA hospital on Vancouver’s East 7th Avenue for a spay operation during the annual Feral Cat Trap. The cats are tagged for identification during the mass spay and neuter day.Ward Perrin
/ PNG

Cat cages are stacked in the waiting area at the BC SPCA hospital during the annual Feral Cat Trap. The feral cats are given spay and neuter operations during the day.Ward Perrin
/ PNG

Eleanor Lewis, left, and Natalie Backgaard prepare a cat on February 24, at the SPCA hospital on Vancouver’s East 7th Avenue for a spay operation during the annual Feral Cat Trap. The cats are tagged for identification during the mass spay and neuter day.Ward Perrin
/ PNG

A young cat is prepared for a spay operation at the BC SPCA hospital on Vancouver’s East 7th Avenue during the annual Feral Cat Trap on February 24.Ward Perrin
/ PNG

Dr. Jane Mancell of the Dewdney animal hospital performs another spay operation on February 24th, at the BC SPCA hospital on Vancouver’s East 7th Avenue during the annual Feral Cat Trap.Ward Perrin
/ PNG

Dr. Jane Mancell of the Dewdney animal hospital performs another spay operation on February 24th, at the BC SPCA hospital on Vancouver’s East 7th Avenue during the annual Feral Cat Trap.Ward Perrin
/ PNG

Dr. Jane Mancell of the Dewdney animal hospital performs another spay operation on February 24th, at the BC SPCA hospital on Vancouver’s East 7th Avenue during the annual Feral Cat Trap.Ward Perrin
/ PNG

Eleanor Lewis, left, and Natalie Backgaard prepare a cat on February 24, at the SPCA hospital on Vancouver’s East 7th Avenue for a spay operation during the annual Feral Cat Trap. The cats are tagged for identification during the mass spay and neuter day.Ward Perrin
/ PNG

Cats are given tattoos at the BC SPCA hospital on Vancouver’s East 7th Avenue during the annual Feral Cat Trap.Ward Perrin
/ PNG

Dr. Rob Ashburner of the West King Edward animal hospital prepares to do another spay operation on February 24th at the BC SPCA hospital.Ward Perrin
/ PNG

Eleanor Lewis, left, and Natalie Backgaard prepare a cat on February 24, at the SPCA hospital on Vancouver’s East 7th Avenue for a spay operation during the annual Feral Cat Trap. The cats are tagged for identification during the mass spay and neuter day.Ward Perrin
/ PNG

Cat ladies get a bad rap. Here, at the SPCA they call them the trappers.

Here, the women with fur stuck to their sweatpants, the ones who stalk the colonies of feral cats, lure lost kittens and strays into cages with bait food and wait for the fall of the automatic drop doors get nothing but respect.

On Sunday, the tiny waiting room at the SPCA animal hospital on West 7th in Vancouver was jammed with towel-draped cages, the soundtrack a tone poem of howls and mewls, and urgent, respectful whispers: “get the net”, “Cat 29”, “who’s next?”

The seventh annual feral cat clinic is underway. One hundred and seven nameless cats, many born under bushes and porches, cats that have lived their entire lives in the urban wild have been trapped and lined up on the floor, peeing in their cages and filled with fear.

A dozen veterinarians have volunteered and twice as many technicians and good citizens, to inoculate, spay, neuter and tattoo the cats that no one else cares for.

Many will be released again into their colonies, explains Dr. Jamie Lawson, chief animal health officer with the B.C. SPCA, released simply because they can’t be domesticated. The life of a feral cat is short and filled with suffering.

“They live on average 2.5 years, that’s if they make it past the first six months,” says Lawson.

Born outside, they starve, succumb to predators or traffic; those that do survive breed on average twice a year. “The over-population of cats is a huge community problem,” says Lawson. The SPCA relies mostly on donations from private citizens, dozens of whom are here today to help out. It also relies on cat ladies, like Maria Soroski, vice-president of the Vancouver Orphan Kitten Rescue Association and master trapper. VOKRA runs out of a basement apartment in Kitsilano, relies solely on donations and rescued 1800 feral cats last year.

Soroski has 30 cats here today.

Lawson is working in the sedation room today with Mandi Idle, a technician from the Cats Only Clinic, and student in the Animal Health Technology program at Douglas College.

Idle’s arms are striped with long red claw-marks, but with her Dexter tattoo and bright orange hair it hardly seems to matter. She positions a towel at the door of the cage and Lawson unsnaps the latch, but Cat 31 won’t come out; they shake the crate, gently. A paw slides out the bottom, but he claws to the back of the cage. Finally he’s out, then flips and twists. He bolts off the table, then like a flying squirrel is up the wall, slides down, screeches across the counter, into the sink, up another wall, across the table, a black and white blur. Lawson and Idle flip and twist, trying to catch up, but the cat wins, ending up on top of a cupboard near the ceiling.

It’s time for the net.

The towel goes over him again, Idle talking in soothing tones as the needle slides into his haunch. Success.

“We try to work quietly and quickly and very gently to sedate the cat,” explains Lawson.

In the spay room, multiple stations are set up to intubate, shave paws, tattoo ears and perform surgeries.

Volunteer Eleanor rubs and caresses the fur of an unconscious grey kitten, as if it could feel her touch, strokes his stomach, massages his shoulders as another volunteer intubates it.

On the recovery table two more volunteers tuck cats into towels, only their faces peeking out, like babies in bunting after their surgeries.

On another table, Dr. Rob Ashburner, a veterinarian at the West King Edward Animal Clinic, pulls stitches through an incision. “It’s great, it’s a really positive experience,” he says. “I was away last week but I came back just for this.”

In the waiting room where the cat ladies eat take out sandwiches, share homemade cookies, laugh and swap stories, there is a sense of joyful accomplishment even as the cats cries continue in the background.

Amy Morris, a policy researcher for the BC SPCA surveys the scene. For Morris, the feral cat over-population problem is personal.

“Today I am just another volunteer here. There are so many that die. There is so much suffering. It’s estimated by the Canadian Federation of Humane Societies that the cat population is growing at a much faster rate than humans.”

CFHS reports estimate there are up to 600,000 cats left homeless annually in Canada.

Today’s event, explains Morris, is partly funded by a generous cat-lover who died and left an endowment for spaying and neutering programs.

“Under our new grant program we gave $60,000 to 15 different communities to help up cats get spayed and neutered.”

She says the SPCA desperately needs community or government funding to help deal with the province’s feral cat population.

In the meantime, there are the cat ladies, the trappers and feeders, the volunteers on the front lines that open their arms and don’t count the scratches.

If you wish to donate to the SPCA spay/neuter program, go to spca.bc.ca

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Volunteers do their best to trim, humanely, the rising population of feral cats

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